Posts Tagged ‘financial times’
Moscow plans to put dead lawyer on trial
Russian investigators have said they may prosecute a dead lawyer who worked for a foreign investment fund in the latest bizarre twist to a case that has come to exemplify investor fears about Russia’s rule of law.
Investigators said they would proceed with a posthumous trial against Sergei Magnitsky over tax fraud following a judicial precedent set last summer, allowing cases to be concluded in spite of the death of the defendant.
The decision comes two years after Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital, died in a pre-trial detention centre where he was held for almost a year after accusing the police of complicity in a $230m tax fraud.
Although investigators have accused Magnitsky and Hermitage’s chief executive William Browder with tax evasion, a presidential human rights commission found last summer that the charges against the lawyer had been fabricated. The federal prison service has already assumed partial responsibility for Magnitsky’s death, which occurred after he was denied access to urgent medical care.
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Russia, Davos and the rule of law
Financial Times
Planning to invest in Russia? Here’s a reason to think again, courtesy of our colleague Gideon Rachman, blogging from the World Economic Forum in Davos. Even Igor Shuvalov, Russia’s deputy prime minister (pictured), was unable to give potential investors the assurances they wanted when speaking about the notorious death in custody of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Shuvalov, himself a lawyer, acknowledged that the case was “horrendous”, but blamed “the system”.
Rachman wrote on Friday in this FT’s Davos liveblog:
The question of what is, or is not, “on the record” at Davos remains a tricky one. Yesterday, I attended a Russia session that I was advertised as “off”. However, there were scores of people in the room, and I later discovered that several had tweeted or blogged about it. Now newspaper accounts are emerging. So let me belatedly join the party.
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Davos rolling blog: day 3
09.15: What happens in Davos stays in Davos… or not? Gideon Rachman attended a session yesterday on Russia, and part of the conversation there – while ostensibly “off the record” – is reverberating outside the meeting room:
The question of what is, or is not, “on the record” at Davos remains a tricky one. Yesterday, I attended a Russia session that I was advertised as “off”. However, there were scores of people in the room, and I later discovered that several had tweeted or blogged about it. Now newspaper accounts are emerging. So let me belatedly join the party.
The most gripping exchange came right at the end when Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital – once the biggest foreign investors in Russia and now a bitter critic – asked the panel about the notorious death in police custody of Sergei Magnitsky, his lawyer and auditor.
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Who’s king of the castle?
At first, playing chess against Garry Kasparov is much like playing chess against anyone else. Take the pieces. They look the same as when you are playing against other people. They move the same way. For some reason this is surprising to me, and so is the fact that we are five moves in and he has not checkmated me yet. He must be off his game, or, just maybe, dare I hope, I am a lot smarter than I thought I was?
But there he is, across the table, actually thinking about his next move. I have a rush of satisfaction. Brain the size of a planet, the greatest chess player who ever lived, and I have made him think.
This moment has been a long time coming. When I had originally explained to Kasparov’s assistant that I wanted to play chess against the great man himself, she had made it clear that this was asking quite a lot, but she would see what she could do.
Then, when I arrive at his flat, I have to re-explain my errand to his mother, who seems to run the PR show for Garry Kasparov Inc. “What rank are you?” she finally asks.
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Sanctions urged on Russian officials over abuses
The Obama administration is coming under pressure from Congress to support sanctions on Russian officials who are known human rights violators in return for repealing a cold war-era law that could limit bilateral trade after Russia joins the World Trade Organisation.
The White House is concerned that sanctions would harm a tentative thaw in relations with the Kremlin and is instead proposing the establishment of a foundation to promote democracy in Russia, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.
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Lebedev targets Russian secret police for damages
Russia’s secret police have long been immune to the law that they supposedly uphold, a state within a state that acts with virtual impunity in the tradition of its KGB forebears. But now, a disgruntled banker has decided to test just how aloof they are from the law, with a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in a Moscow court.
Alexander Lebedev, the billionaire owner of The Independent and Evening Standard newspapers in London, launched the lawsuit claiming damages of 350m roubles ($11.6m) to his business reputation following a raid by masked special forces on his National Reserve Bank in November.
The lawsuit is the first of its kind in Russia to target the FSB, according to Mr Lebedev. “It’s the first time to my knowledge that any one has tried this,” he said.
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Internet: Web becomes valued forum for free speech
When state television showed a dynamic Vladimir Putin at the wheel of a yellow Lada touring the provinces after devastating forest fires, a fuller picture was to be found on the internet.
Video shot by laughing onlookers and uploaded to the net showed that the prime minister was in fact followed by a motorcade of at least two dozen vehicles, including three spare yellow Ladas in case of a mechanical breakdown.
There are few sectors that better reflect Russia’s lopsided development than the internet. The web has grown strongly as a business, drawing on the nation’s strengths in maths and science to produce a domestic search engine, Yandex, that describes itself as “better than Google”.
Yet the government’s efforts to foster a Russian Silicon Valley outside Moscow show how a poor investment climate is letting down that human potential.
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Russian police accused over dead lawyer
A commission appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev has found that Russian police fabricated charges against an anti-corruption lawyer, whose death in prison in 2009 has come to symbolise pervasive corruption in Russian law enforcement.
Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer working for Hermitage Capital, formerly the largest portfolio investor in Russia, was imprisoned in 2008 after he reported a $230m tax fraud to Russian authorities, accusing police of carrying it out.
He died after almost a year in progressively worse conditions and was denied urgent medical care in an effort to coerce him to change his testimony, according to human rights groups. The federal prison service has admitted it was partly responsible for the death in custody.
The case has become one of the biggest headaches faced by Russia’s government which has yet to charge anyone. No one has yet been charged over the death, despite overwhelming evidence that Magnitsky was forcibly silenced by corrupt police officers.
An investigation by the Russian prosecutor’s office, ordered by Mr Medvedev in December 2009, has still not been completed.
One key figure, Oleg Silchenko, the interior ministry officer who signed the orders detaining Mr Magnitsky without trial for nearly a year until his death, was even promoted last July to Lt Col.
On Tuesday, Russian law enforcement suffered yet another blow when Mr Medvedev’s own human rights commission, staffed by independent lawyers, said the charges against Mr Magnitsky in 2008 had been “fabricated” by the police officers who arrested him, and had no legal basis.
At least one of these officers, Lt Col Artyom Kuznetsov, was among the men Mr Magnitsky had accused of participating in the $230m fraud. Mr Kuznetsov has refused to comment on the case.
The denial of medical care in prison was intended to coerce Mr Magnitsky to change his testimony against interior ministry officials, according to a December 2009 report by the Moscow Public Oversight Commission, created by Mr Medvedev to oversee human rights in jails.
The report shown to journalists on Tuesday was commissioned by Mr Medvedev at a meeting on human rights in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on February 1, in which he asked his human rights council to examine the legal bases for the arrests of Mr Magnitsky. “The accusations against Magnitsky were fabricated by employees of the MVD [Interior Ministry] and FSB [Federal Security Service]” said the report.
Police had arrested Mr Magnitsky in 2008 on charges of evading taxes in 2001 which the council’s report ruled was baseless because he had been since cleared of any wrongdoing by the Russian Tax Service. In any event the time limit on such charges would have expired in 2004, according to the report.
William Browder, head of Hermitage Capital, said he welcomed the report, but added: “Everybody knows that Sergei Magnitsky was falsely accused, arrested, and killed by the interior ministry. The real question is why Mr Medvedev and the Russian government are unable or unwilling to do anything to punish his murderers.”
The Russian Interior Ministry has said that it is awaiting the results of the formal investigation currently being conducted by the prosecutor’s office, which was begun on Mr Medvedev’s order in December 2009.
“There are supervisory bodies, in this case the prosecutor’s office, and it is in their competency to make such judgements. We will leave this announcement with commentary”, the interior ministry said on Tuesday. hairy girl hairy woman https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/apply-for-payday-loan-online.php займ на карту
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Cameron voices concerns over Russian lawyer’s death
The UK has urged the Kremlin to reveal the findings of an investigation into the death in custody of a Russian corporate lawyer who alleged police corruption.
Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer working for Hermitage Capital, a Russian investment fund, died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after testifying against police for alleged complicity in a $230m tax fraud using companies that belonged to his client.
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